The Generals (22 page)

Major von Peters
: Call in the parties now, Mateo.

Colonel Pigafetta
: Brown, open the windows.

Major von Peters
: Get going now, Mateo. Call in the parties.

Colonel Orbal
: What’s all the damned hurry? Yes, call in the parties now, Brown.

Captain Schmidt
: At yesterday’s session, the case against Velder was brought to the point just prior to the accused’s desertion from the armed forces. We are still concerned with points seventy-eight
to and including eighty-two in the case, reference to desertion and high treason. When Velder’s story was interrupted yesterday he had just opened his sealed orders. He was still in the office at Checkpoint C, where, according to his own statement, he was what is called a prey to his own conflicting thoughts. The time was five minutes to two and by delaying carrying out the action-order he had already grossly failed in his duty. Velder’s next actions to a certain extent influenced the future of the nation. So it is important that we create a clear picture of the situation in general. To enable me to do this, I will refer to some written documents, first and foremost a fragment from a diary written by Aranca Peterson and presumably intended as the basis for the aforementioned memoirs, which she and Janos Edner together planned to publish, but which they clearly never completed. If you please, Lieutenant Brown.

Lieutenant Brown
: Appendix V V/33. Concerning the situation in Oswaldsburg on the night of December 13th. Confiscated documentation written by the traitor Aranca Peterson. Marked Secret according to paragraphs eight, eleven and fourteen to twenty-two.

Major von Peters
: Is all that going to start again now?

Lieutenant Brown
: Orders, sir. The text is as follows: I’ll now try to remember what happened during that decisive night, the night of the thirteenth, how and in what order it happened and how we understood it. Tadeusz left the Council buildings at about half-past eleven, soon after the final count had been made. Oswald must have gone at about midnight, followed by his constant companion Velder, the man whose, as far as I can make out, quite worthy sex life had caused us so much trouble and discord. Thus Janos, Dana and I were left behind in the room. We sat there for a while drinking beer and not saying much. Janos had collected himself from his in itself understandable but unnecessarily violent reaction (perhaps I’ll have to look after him better, I thought) and when we had looked at the figures for a while, a conversation developed of which, despite the short time which has elapsed since then, I can remember only the bare outlines.

Dana: Oswald seemed astonishingly satisfied.

Janos: He had good reason to. Thirty thousand sympathisers to build on. Not so dusty.

Me: Do you think he’ll go on building on to them?

Janos: I’m sure he will. He certainly hasn’t acquired those uniforms and general’s teeth just for fun.

Me: But the referendum was an overwhelming manifestation in favour of us, after all. He got three per cent of the votes. A defeat in an election can hardly be greater than that.

Janos: And we got eighty per cent.

Me: What do you mean?

Janos: The fourteen per cent who voted for us we can’t rely on at all. The fact that they voted at all shows that they haven’t grasped the idea—or that they don’t sympathise with it, possibly with us personally. Consequently they might just as well have voted for Oswald. In practice, then, seventeen per cent of the people are not to be trusted. That’s not all that few. Just think, seventeen out of a hundred.

Dana: I’m scared of Oswald.

(She said this very suddenly.)

Janos: You mean that you don’t trust him.

Dana: No, I mean just what I said. I’m scared of him. I’m not usually scared, as you know, but I’ve seen people like him before, in different circumstances and a long way away from here.

Me: But what is it he’s after?

Dana: Power.

Janos: But he’s got it. He’s got everything he could possibly want, from uniforms and medals to aeroplanes and guns.

Dana: Perhaps that’s not what he primarily wants—but simply power. In that case …

Me: In that case what?

Dana: In that case it is a matter of indifference to him whether he takes power by force over a barren desert or over an ideal society. The main thing is power in itself, as a phenomenon.

Janos: Oswald has never been like that.

Dana: Perhaps he wasn’t, but he may have become so. He lives alone, doesn’t he? The seeds to this are in everyone, but I think they grow more easily in someone who is alone. I know that. I live alone too.

Me: No one can be very much alone here. They’re not meant to.

(Naïve, I admit, but I said that.)

Dana: I’ve been damned alone here, many a time.

Janos: Perhaps Oswald is going mad. In that case we must help him. But I must say that Tadeusz annoys me more. His spinelessness has always irritated me and it’s got worse over the years.

Dana: Tadeusz Haller is a second-tier person. He’s always been so, and he’ll always latch on to new opportunities in the vain hope that they will eventually carry him up to that top step which he’ll never reach. I don’t understand why you allied yourself with him in the first place.

Me: There’s a lot you don’t understand. We’ve known Tadeusz for a long time. He’s intelligent and his fundamental attitude is right.

Dana: I’ll agree that he’s gifted, but what for? And fundamental attitudes can be changed.

(Where have I heard that before? Naturally, from myself, long ago.)

Dana: And also, it’s not impossible that Oswald isn’t right on a number of points. There is perhaps a fundamental moral sense of belonging which one can stand outside of for a while—but not in the long run.

Janos: What would that be?

Dana: I don’t know. If I’d known that I wouldn’t be sitting here.

We sat on for a while longer, chatting about this and that, the irritableness still there. Janos repeated several times that Oswald and Tade had had a set-back and that tomorrow they’d shrug their shoulders and then we’d soon all shrug our shoulders at this odd interlude and laugh at it. He also said that if Oswald wanted to be dictator then he only had to say so, then we could just fix it in some way. If he wanted to play Leader, why not? He ought to realise that himself, too, Janos said, still as if he wanted to convince himself at any price. ‘Ought to and ought to,’ said Dana. Suddenly she shuddered. (She has an unpleasant way of being oversensitive, as if her nerve-ends were outside her skin.)

‘I wish Ludolf were here,’ she said.

I asked why, but she didn’t answer. Janos sat thinking for a while. Outside, it was absolutely deathly quiet and I felt as if
we three were alone in the whole universe. (What peculiar things I do think up.)

Then Janos said:

‘Ludolf, yes. We could send him a telegram, couldn’t we—if he’s sober enough to be able to read it?’

We wrote it out together and Danica went over to the ’phone to ring it through. She clicked the cradle several times. Finally she said:

‘It’s dead.’

‘Send it on the telex then,’ said Janos, yawning. (He looked pointedly at me, as if I hadn’t known a long time ago that he wanted us to go to bed.)

‘That’s dead, too,’ said Dana, after a minute or two.

‘The hell it is,’ said Janos. ‘Has the whole damned tele-system collapsed? Oh, well, I’ll trot over to the tele-centre with it.’

‘No,’ said Dana. ‘I’ll go. I’m an old hand at night-wandering.’

She took the telegram form and left. It was then five to two. When Janos and I were alone, he looked at the referendum figures and smiled. That was the first time that evening. Then we went up and looked in on the kids, who were asleep, and went on into our bedroom.

We began to get undressed. I was standing naked in the middle of the floor and Janos was still in his shirt and trousers in the bathroom when the door was jerked open. Quite without any warning. It was Dana. She was panting and said:

‘The tele-centre is occupied by police troops. Oswald’s people. All external lines are closed. They’ve put an emplacement with sandbags and machine-guns outside the building. I only got away by the skin of my teeth, presumably only because none of the soldiers recognised me. An officer told me that I should go home and keep calm. Everything would be cleared up early tomorrow morning and then I could send my telegram. I ran back here.’

‘Did you see anything else?’

‘No, nothing. It was quiet and calm everywhere.’

‘What the hell?’ said Janos.

‘Yes,’ said Dana. ‘Exactly. What the hell?’

I got my clothes on faster than Janos did, although he only had to pull on his socks, shoes and jacket. We went down to the ground
floor. Janos put on his cap and opened the outer door. There were three soldiers on the steps. They had firearms in their hands. I had never seen any of them before. One of them saluted and said very courteously:

‘I must ask you not to leave the building. The whole block is surrounded. We have orders to shoot if you attempt to leave.’

‘What’s all this nonsense?’ said Janos, and he began walking down the steps.

The soldier who had spoken raised his rifle and cocked it; the others did the same.

‘You’re putting me in an untenable position,’ he said. ‘You leave me no choice.’

Janos stopped. I saw then that the soldier who had spoken had stars on his collar.

‘A state of emergency has been declared,’ said the soldier. ‘The Army has taken over responsibility for safety and that applies to everyone. As long as you stay indoors nothing will happen to you. If on the other hand …’

Colonel Orbal
: Who was that officer?

Major von Peters
: Lieutenant de Wilde, you must remember. He was demoted the next day. Killed at Ludolfsport.

Colonel Orbal
: Oh, was he? Good demeanour, nevertheless.

Major von Peters
: Too good.

Lieutenant Brown
: I shall continue … with the permission of the presidium.

Finally we went back into the building and stood staring at each other. Janos mumbled over and over again: ‘A military coup … the most impossible of everything that’s impossible … the most distasteful … a military coup.’

‘Are there any weapons in this place?’ said Dana.

‘You know as well as I do that there aren’t,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing here except ourselves, the kids and their nurse.’

‘We must get away,’ said Janos.

‘Yes,’ said Dana. ‘But how?’

Janos went over to the window and looked out. There were soldiers everywhere.

‘Has that idiot really enough men to manage this?’ he said.

‘Obviously,’ said Dana. ‘I’ve seen about forty uniformed men
now. Here and at the tele centre. And I didn’t recognise a single one of them. Something has just passed us by.’

‘Yes, it certainly has,’ said Janos. ‘We’re casualties of one of our basic principles, limited supervision. And Ludolf …’

‘Will they take over the airport early tomorrow morning?’ I said.

We looked at each other, but none of us was adjusted to the situation being hopeless or definitely catastrophic. If it had all suddenly turned out to be a gigantic practical joke, we wouldn’t have been especially surprised; anyhow, I wouldn’t.

At exactly ten to three, someone in military boots came stumping up the stairs. There was a bang on the door and a voice shouted: ‘Military! Open up!’

‘It’s not locked,’ I called. (We didn’t usually lock up. I don’t even think there was a key.)

The door was opened and a soldier came in. He had a machine-gun on a strap across his chest and a steel helmet on his head. We recognised him at once. It was Erwin Velder, Oswald’s private bloodhound.

Captain Schmidt
: That’s enough. You can stop there, Brown. The notes in the fragment do in fact cover several more pages, but it would be perhaps of greater interest to hear Velder’s version of the course of events.

Major von Peters
: Frightfully interesting. So now we’ve got to listen to the same thing, which we already know about anyhow, all over again, have we?

Colonel Pigafetta
: That undeniably doesn’t sound particularly cheering.

Captain Schmidt
: Captain Endicott, have you prepared the accused and tried to persuade him to be brief?

Major von Peters
: ‘Tried to persuade him’ is delightful.

Captain Endicott
: Yes, as far as is possible.

Major von Peters
: ‘As far as is possible’ is delightful too. What the hell is this? A court martial or a nursery school?

Captain Schmidt
: And he knows where he’s to begin?

Captain Endicott
: I think so.

Major von Peters
: This eternal thinking is getting on my nerves. Push the swine forward now, Brown, so something gets done.

Colonel Orbal
: Exactly. Just get going.

Captain Schmidt
: Velder, will you describe what happened from fifty-five minutes past one onwards on the thirteenth of December.

Colonel Orbal
: That window idea was brilliant. Works excellently. Doesn’t it?

Captain Schmidt
: Yes, sir. Well, Velder. At five to two, you still didn’t know what to do.

Velder
: I was sitting at the little table in the office at the post and listening to the men moving about outside. At exactly two o’clock, when according to that order, we ought already to have been in place at the road barriers, I went out. I gave orders for embarkation, formation and departure. The convoy consisted of a jeep, the two large trucks and two light armoured cars for troop transport. We drove the only possible way, crossing the southern autostrad, as both sides of the crossroads were blocked with tank barriers and trucks placed across the traffic lanes. The barriers were well manned. An officer standing at the crossroads irritably indicated that we were nearly fifteen minutes late and that the northern road was thus still open. When he recognised me, he moderated his tone considerably. We touched on Oswaldsburg’s eastern outskirts and swung in on to the old road to Ludolfsport. When we passed the inn in square forty-seven we were stopped by a signaller, who once again pointed out that we were a quarter of an hour late. He was the only soldier I saw all the way. I let the convoy continue for three kilometres past the barrier positions and swung into a side road to the south. It led to an ex-church which earlier had been used as a pig-shed, but had now been abandoned. The roof had fallen in and it was useless. After getting the vehicles parked in the terrain round about, I set up guard-posts and let the rest of the men bivouac in the ruined church. Then I went from vehicle to vehicle, removing the distributor-heads from the jeep and one of the armoured cars. I left the trucks as they were. They had to be unloaded anyhow, before they could be used as troop transports. I put one of the walkie-talkies out of action. The other I took with me. Then I appointed someone in command and a second-in-command, gave orders that the area round the church was at all costs to be held in case of attack, and drove back towards Oswaldsburg in the remaining armoured car. After I had passed the signaller by the inn, I stopped at a safe distance and began working on the radio-receiver.